[RUMOUR] No PPC 7457's in new PB's

[CmdrLaForge]

Originally posted by ColoJohnBoy
For the love of God, this is getting ridiculous. A 7457 update is really the only acceptable PowerBook update. If it's another 7455, then screw it. My 1 GHz TiBook already gets hot enough (hotter than any 12" PB) and I don't need it getting hotter by adding an extra 250 MHz to the clock speed. I sincerely hope Steve just says to everyone at the Paris Expo that Apple is getting sick of Moto and they're switching entirely to IBM. Add AltiVec to the Gobi G3's for the iBooks and eMacs, put low-clocked G5's in the iMacs and PowerBooks, and the world will be whole again. If Motorola is going to have the same supply issues again as they have been having, it simply isn't worth Apple's time or money to invest any more of either into them.

Pardon my exasperation, but I'm really very annoyed.

I can really understand that you are disappointed about Moto, but never forget. Moto is a big player. And they have the ability to catch up. Rumors are saying that it was not the engineers at Moto but the Managers you made the wrong decisions. In the long run (next 5 - 10 years) it would be very wise for Apple to work with two suppliers and not only one. If they had only one - it could kill Apple. E.g. IBM decides in 5 years not to support Apple any longer. You can never know.

 

[CoreForce]

IBM compiler for G5

Hi there,

IBM just release new compilers for the G5 that bring dramatic power to this chip.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/as-28.08.03-000/

translated to english:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babe...sticker/data/as-28.08.03-000/&tt=url&lp=de_en


Any investment to the G4 is a waste of money. Just my 2 cent.

 

[groovebuster]

Originally posted by CmdrLaForge
I can really understand that you are disappointed about Moto, but never forget. Moto is a big player. And they have the ability to catch up. Rumors are saying that it was not the engineers at Moto but the Managers you made the wrong decisions.

Well, Motorola layed off a lot of staff in their microprocessors devision because their quarterly results were written in deep red ink for a while. Fact is, that they just don't have the manpower anymore to develop processors in a decent time frame.

Originally posted by CmdrLaForge
In the long run (next 5 - 10 years) it would be very wise for Apple to work with two suppliers and not only one. If they had only one - it could kill Apple. E.g. IBM decides in 5 years not to support Apple any longer. You can never know.

And that leads to the second problem... Motorola's target market is embedded systems and not CPUs for personal computers (anymore). That's where they make the big bucks. Apple is just a little customer for them, purchasing the G4 from them. And Apple is also the only computer manufacturer using a Motorola CPU in their machines. The R&D costs to keep the G4 up-to-date as a PC CPU are in no relation to the revenues. Doing the split all the time to develop their CPUs for embedded systems and to keep Apple happy is unreasonable from an economical point of view. Motorolas road-map already reflects where they make their money. Considering their situation it is understandable why they neglect the development of their CPUs for use in PCs, even though we (as Mac users) are not too happy about it. Motorola has share holders too that need to kept happy and when you have a part of your product portfolio that costs you more than you earn with it, you just get rid of it... That's how business is.

For IBM it is much less critical to go with Apple, because they develop CPUs for use in computers (mainly servers) anyway. They have a totally different approach to the problem, since the PPC970 is "just" a crippled Power4 processor. Motorola has the problem that they don't have a high end product like that to take advantage of.

So at the moment it seems that Apple has no choice than being in bed with only IBM on the long run. And to speculate about what's happening in about 5 years is unnecessary, since it is pure speculation anyway. But that Motorola will be back in the ring with a competitive PowerPC processor for PCs is as unlikely as MS would make Office a Mac-only product... Except Apple would gain a market share of 30% or other computer manufacturers would start to use PowerPCs again as well. But that's pretty unlikely as well, since they would never have an acceptable ROI.

Regards,

groovebuster

 

[Ben Sheehan]

Re: Argh... always these G5 gets too hot posts...

Originally posted by AhmedFaisal
We are talking 1MB of L2 Cache on Die at full CPU speed, 90nm and clock speed at 1.3GHz while still dissipating not more than 11Watts. Perfect for a small entry level notebook, thats btw. the same clockspeed that the slower Centrinos from Intel have. Along with a 200MHz FSB they will be perfect. And guess what, for G3 beyond Gobi, Altivec has appeared in the Specs, and not Motorola's Altivec, but IBMs Altivec

Bring this on. If Apple bumped the resolution on the 14" ibook and released it with these specs, I'd fall over myself on the way to the store. Heck, they could release it in a powerbook and I'd buy it (though I realize that just ain't going to happen). 11 Watts - imagine using a laptop in summer without burning your knees, and hey, isn't the G3 faster than the G4 clock for clock anyway

 

[stockscalper]

I got three words to say about this ....


REMEMBER THE BLACKBIRD!

 

[LOZ23]

Even the emac has caught up with the Powerbook!!!!!

I remember when the powerbook was viewed with awe. Now you can get the same processing power from the almost bottom of the range emac. The emacs are cheap systems designed for schools to surf the web and use light apps. Pbooks should have a faster processor than apples bottom of the range models!!!

Maybe it should be renamed the ebook

 

[ZildjianKX]

Re: Even the emac has caught up with the Powerbook!!!!!

Originally posted by LOZ23
I remember when the powerbook was viewed with awe. Now you can get the same processing power from the almost bottom of the range emac. The emacs are cheap systems designed for schools to surf the web and use light apps. Pbooks should have a faster processor than apples bottom of the range models!!!

Maybe it should be renamed the ebook

Man, I agree with you. Its disgraceful. There is a HUGE gap between top of the line Apple towers and laptops... absolutely huge.

 

[agentmouthwash]

2 button mouse on pro models

I think the thing that bugs me the most is the fact that the new powerbooks will most likely still have a 1 button mouse.

Ok I've been using Apple computers since the Apple IIe in 1983, way before they even invented the mouse and I know Apple's stance on the multi-button thing how they are hard for beginners..
but that's what the iBook is for.

leave one button on the iBook and
update the PRO models with two.

Too bad Steve doesn't read these posts...

 

[dCube]

Speculation

Ok wild speculation on the ParisExpo announcements here, I haven't read it anywhere else:

- minor retouching to the hardware (except for the PB15 enclosure), I hope for 7457 but 7455 B could be it

However:

- major bragging about improved battery life and lower heat on the "new and vastly improved powerbooks"

How?

Software. I've read somewhere that Panther is supposed to be more battery/mobile friendly, that alone might make battery life double and heat dissipation halven (it's not like you can do one without the other).

Waiting for a PB12 myself.

 

[manu chao]

IBM C++ and Fortran compilers

BTW, the IBM compilers ported to OS X mentioned earlier in this thread, were announced two months ago by macbidouille (27 June). I had not seen anybody else reporting this back than. That much about the credibility of macbidouille's sources.

 

[pigwin32]

Originally posted by Marble
All of the Powerbooks can be ordered with a Superdrive, and they all seem to qualify for decent airport reception as well (the 15" has a construction issue that can be simply solved by removing the battery and pressing along the edges of the indentation). Is an external drive not an option for extra hard drive space?

20-20 hindsight, I should have ordered my TiBook with the superdrive, I didn't. Airport reception is crap and a known issue with the 15". I'm not sure what exactly pressing along the edges of the indentation of anything is going to fix. I understand the airport reception issue is related to the 15" case acting like a Faraday Cage. An external drive is potentially useful but another cable and an additional widget in my bag. Anyway, a year later and I'm ready to spend some money to alleviate these frustrations.

 

[AllenPSU]

Re: IBM compiler for G5

Originally posted by CoreForce
Any investment to the G4 is a waste of money. Just my 2 cent.

But if its the only thing out there at this time... what choice do we have if we cannot wait?

 

[nitropowered]

Originally posted by skymaXimus
Off topic a little bit ... How long was the G4 in desktops before it made it into PowerBooks? I still consider the last version of the Pismo to be one of Apples best laptops ever. Did Pismo sales drop in anticiaption of a G4 PowerBook just like current PowerBook sales are waining? Also, the design of the G4pb vs the Pismo was totally different. I don't think anyone has taken into consideration that Apple just recently released the Alu book and that when the G5 makes it into the PB the design probably won't be of the Alu era. Just random thoughts.

It was two years before the powerbook g4 came out after the powermac g4 was released. But considering how long apple has been working with IBM to develop the G5, it should not take that long to make a pb G5. As for th pb g4, I would say the they would need the 7457's, at least 1ghz in the 12" and faster 1.25 or 1.33 in the 15 and 17, otherwise its not worth buying one.

 

[DrBoar]

The fact that the G4 was very slow in coming to the PB was partly due to the fact that it took a very long time for the G4 to get past the G3 in performance. The G3/450 tower came early 1999 and it was two year later before the G4 went past 533 MHz (to 733). So cramming a hot G4 offering SMP (useless) and Altivec (almost useless back in 1999-2001), into a BP to replace a cooler G3 was not a smart thing.

As opposed to the G3-G4 transition the IBM 970 seem to offer a substantial performance gain right from the start. So there is a good reason to try to get the 970 into everyting ASAP.

Regarding the latest Motorola CPU debacle, what ever CPU they will offer it will be for one last speed bump of the current lineup of PB, iMac and eMAc and the next time it will move to the iBook (perhaps). If the G4 would promise to leap toward the 2 GHz line and then not show up that would be a dissapointment but a low power version going from 1.0 to 1.25 GHz or so

If 1.0 GHz is to slow so will 1.2-1.3 GHz be

 

[Plutoniq]

Buy a used 400mhz Powerbook Pismo for $700 bucks, throw 1gb of Ram in it for, say, $150 (Trans INTL), buy a 2x Superdrive from ESBUY.com for $300 (Easy install into Expansion bay), Buy a VTBookDD 32mb DDR DVI cardbus graphics card (Available Soon), throw an internal Airport card into her ($65 used)......sit on that for a few months till Powerlogix incorporates the 1.1ghz IBM PowerPC 750GX (1mb 1:1 L2 cache) into their Pismo Blue Chip upgrade, priced around $340....or just the current 900mhz 750FX upgrade thats available.

Lets see, thats like a $1500 investment......a profesional-grade Apple Powerbook, with a beautiful 4th generation IBM G3 Gobi CPU (it will happen). Aside from the lack of a hardcore 3d GPU (Rage 128 mobility is still decent though), you've got a damn fine machine for a nice price.

 

[Vlade]

Originally posted by Plutoniq
(Rage 128 mobility is still decent though)

If you wanna play 3D Pong maybe

 

[AllenPSU]

DVD rendering...

Originally posted by DrBoar
If 1.0 GHz [G4] is to slow so will 1.2-1.3 GHz be?

I don't know. I have a Quicksilver Desktop (867 single processor G4, 1.2 GB Ram) and ran into my first real limiting project. I just upgraded to a superdrive and burned my first DVD... that took nearly 40minutes to render and burn. I know about 20 minutes of that was wasted on 1X media, but the rendering took a long time too.

Not sure if a boost up to 1.3 GHz will make that much difference but losing Altivec might hurt a lot.

 

[rickag]

Originally posted by groovebuster
... Apple is just a little customer for them, purchasing the G4 from them. And Apple is also the only computer manufacturer using a Motorola CPU in their machines. The R&D costs to keep the G4 up-to-date as a PC CPU are in no relation to the revenues...
Regards,

groovebuster

A few months back Motorola published total sales figures for their G4. Motorola triumphantly claimed total sales @ about 7 million. Over the course of its' life Apple purchased right at 50% of those. So I really tend to disagree with your position.

While Motorola does indeed sell a very large number of processors, most are very low cost, with razor thin margins, EXCEPT for the G4. The G4 is their high dollar processor and does represent significant revenue AND APPLE WAS PURCHASING HALF OF THEM.

If Apple can or is willing to replace the G4 completely, it will be a large blow to Motorola in revenue and esteem in the industry.

 

[Sun Baked]

Originally posted by rickag
If Apple can or is willing to replace the G4 completely, it will be a large blow to Motorola in revenue and esteem in the industry.

Especially if the LinuxPPC whitebox market follows Apple's lead in moving to the PPC970 -- and there have been hints that there will be some thirdy-party controllers for the PPC970.

This market isn't standing still either -- Mai Logic added PCI-X to their G3/G4 Northbridge controller.

And if Amiga ever can get AmigaOS 4.0 out the door, there's another chunk of lost revenue for Motorola -- if Amiga makes the switch to the PPC970 rather quickly. And since Amigas are mildly modified LinuxPPCs, it could happen rather quick.

 

[ozlow]

Re: 2 button mouse on pro models

Originally posted by agentmouthwash
I think the thing that bugs me the most is the fact that the new powerbooks will most likely still have a 1 button mouse.

Ok I've been using Apple computers since the Apple IIe in 1983, way before they even invented the mouse and I know Apple's stance on the multi-button thing how they are hard for beginners..
but that's what the iBook is for.

leave one button on the iBook and
update the PRO models with two.

Too bad Steve doesn't read these posts...

Two button mice are queer! Long live the one button mouse! Plus, there's always the control key...right?

 

[AhmedFaisal]

Re: Re: 2 button mouse on pro models

Originally posted by ozlow
Two button mice are queer! Long live the one button mouse! Plus, there's always the control key...right?

Actually it depends very much on the context, as for an external mouse, one that you push around on a mousepad or a trackball, 2 buttons are a good thing to have. on a laptop however, they are an ergonomical nightmare. I find it annoyingly hard on PC notebooks to switch between right and left button with my thumb while I move around on the touchpad or trackpoint with my index finger, here I like the way Apple has it with one button plus ctrl for the context menu much better.
Cheers,

Ahmed

 

[Stelliform]

Re: [RUMOUR] No PPC 7457's in new PB's

Originally posted by astray
Taken from MacBidouille, google translation:


[ Rumours ] No PPC 7457 in Aluminum, etc - Ewok - 13:23:26
Motorola would not ensure as envisaged the production of PPC 7457 intended for the AluBooks futures. Consequently, the next ones will embark PPC 7455 B It will result from it from the falls of performances compared to those envisaged (in particular because of 256 KB of mask (L2 cache i think) instead of 512 and lower frequencies), a hot summer days to be dissipated and a reduced autonomy of some pourcents(percents?). The PPC 7457 should nevertheless be available during the last quarter of this year. One can deduce from it that it will be integrated in AluBooks for January.

In addition, of the keyboards and mice without wire could be revealed in September (for APPLE Expo?).

He missed the last sentence in the first paragraph....

Mais il reste plus probable qu'Apple décide de laisser alors tomber le G4 pour passer au G5 dans les portables.

translated....

But this makes it more probable that APPLE decides to drop the G4 to put the G5's in the portables.

Pure speculation... But they are thinking what we are thinking....

 

[groovebuster]

Originally posted by rickag
A few months back Motorola published total sales figures for their G4. Motorola triumphantly claimed total sales @ about 7 million. Over the course of its' life Apple purchased right at 50% of those. So I really tend to disagree with your position.

Total sales figures can be misleading. In the early days of the G4 Apple probably purchased way more than 50% of the G4 production. But the G4 is on the market since 4 years. Especially the last one and a half years I highly doubt that the chunk of the total production Apple bought from Motorola was anywhere close to 50%, since PowerMac sales alsmost stalled compared to the beginning. And even if it was 20% of all G4s, then put it into relation to the number of G4s sold by Motorola during that time... especially considering the truly high costs to keep the processor up-to-date. Also don't forget that Apple already switched a while ago to G3s completely from IBM. In the beginning Apple purchased G3s from IBM and Motorola. I highly doubt that switching the entry level Macs (like eMac and iMac) to G4s are making up for these losses.

Originally posted by rickag
While Motorola does indeed sell a very large number of processors, most are very low cost, with razor thin margins, EXCEPT for the G4. The G4 is their high dollar processor and does represent significant revenue AND APPLE WAS PURCHASING HALF OF THEM.

Again: overall sales numbers don't tell the entire truth. I agree that the G4 used to be the cash cow for Motorola, but that is exactly the problem. They can't take a permium anymore for dated technology. Considering what these processors offer (bang per buck) they are way overpriced. And one key argument in the beginning was, that the PowerPC is cheaper than a comparable Intel/AMD chip. That was maybe true for the first 6 months after the G4 was introduced. They could lower the prices, but than they make even more losses and have even less money for R&D. But if they keep their high prices, nobody will buy their crap anymore. Too bad...

Originally posted by rickag
If Apple can or is willing to replace the G4 completely, it will be a large blow to Motorola in revenue and esteem in the industry.

I wouldn't go that far... for the rest of the industry there are alternatives to the G4 and already Apple switching the PowerMacs to the G5 is a clear signal where the journey goes. It is up to Motorola to develop a competitive succesor to the G4 that is optimized for usage in Laptops and portables. If they blow it, nobody will be overly surprised and I am sure that IBM is willing to close the gap for Apple. Maybe they even buy the G4 assets from Motorola to integrate them into future developments... but actually I don't see the need, since IBM has enough Know-How (e.g. G3) in-house already.

groovebuster

 

[pgwalsh]

I recall this being a rumor from MacBidouille and do not recall it being set in stone. So, I'm not sure why so many people are getting overly worked up about it. Maybe they're saving the introduction for MacWorld Paris? If nothing is said on September 16th (my birthday) then get worked up abou it.

I know the wait sucks.

 

[rickag]

Originally posted by groovebuster
Total sales figures can be misleading. In the early days of the G4 Apple probably purchased way more than 50% of the G4 production. But the G4 is on the market since 4 years....
groovebuster

Total G4 lprocessor Sales as stated by Motorola = 7 million

Apple has sold about 3.5 million G4 processors in their computers.

That puts Apple buying about half of all G4 processors ever sold.

The only other major customer for the G4 listed in Motorola's press releases was CISCO. There may be others, but Motorola has not seen fit to announce them. I think you also underestimate the current total sales of G4's to Apple and overestimate sales to other customers. Anyting above 1.0GHZ and quite possibly 800MHz would be too hot for the embedded market, and the fastest processors, 1.25/1.42GHz would still command the highest prices.

The iMac was until the G5 the # 1 selling Apple computer. Combined with the towers especially the duals my bet is that Apple was still buying half Motorola's production(sheer speculation).

Most Motorola processors cost significantly less than the cheapest G4, the embedded market doesn't need cpu's. Two years ago, a Motorola annual report listed their top five customers, in no apparent order, and Apple was listed in that group.

And no, I'm not dredging up the links, but they are fact.